Modern automobiles are logging tremendous amounts of information every single second they’re being put to use, and a senior executive at the Ford Motor Company says car manufacturers have access to every last piece of it.

At the CES electronic trade show in Las Vegas this week, the
global vice president for Ford’s marketing and sales division
opened up about just exactly how much data is being collected by
his company’s latest line of smart cars.

“We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you're
doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you're
doing,” Ford’s Jim Farley told a Vegas crowd on Wednesday,
according to Business
Insider reporter Jim Edwards.

“By the way, we don't supply that data to anyone,"
Farley assured attendees.

But just as how National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden
revealed how the United States government compels
telecommunication companies for metadata pertaining to the phone
habits of millions of Americans on a regular basis, the sheer
face alone that this automotive data is being collected and
stored means it could someday be used by others.

Edwards described Farley’s remark as being “both sinister and
obvious.”

“Because of the GPS units installed in Ford vehicles, Ford
knows when its drivers are speeding, and where they are while
they're doing it,” Edwards wrote. Should the company choose
to share that information with law enforcement, though, then it
could create an environment where surveillance extends off the
computer and onto the road.

As many as 96 percent
of the cars mass-produced in 2013 included event data recorders,
RT reported last year, similar to the black boxes that log
information inside airplanes.

“These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive
amounts of data,” Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center told the New York Times then. “Without
protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse,” she said.

According to Business Insider, Farley said this information is
being recorded in cars by Ford so that data aggregators and
analysts may someday later be able to use it in real time to help
solve problems, such as traffic congestion.

As RT reported
earlier this week, however, automobile owners don’t have a choice
for now as to whether or not they want their activities being
etched into the computers of car makers. The Government
Accountability Office released a report days before Farley’s
remarks detailing the results of an investigation into data
storage protocol among auto makers Ford, General Motors,
Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan and said that, across the
board, if companies retained data then “they did not allow
consumers to request that their data is deleted.”

The GAO says it would be a “recommended practice” for
auto makers to adopt a policy that lets drivers be sure their
personal driving data is destroyed upon request.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) initially asked for the report to
be conducted, and upon its completion this week he issued a
statement saying more needs to be done to safeguard privacy in
the information age.

“Modern technology now allows drivers to get turn-by-turn
directions in a matter of seconds, but our privacy laws haven’t
kept pace with these enormous advances,” Franken said.
“Companies providing in-car location services are taking
their customers’ privacy seriously – but this report shows that
Minnesotans and people across the country need much more
information about how data are being collected, what they’re
being used for, and how they’re being shared with third
parties.”